Hook (film)
| screenplay = | story = | based on = | starring = | music = John Williams | cinematography = Dean Cundey | editing = Michael Kahn | studio = Amblin Entertainment | distributor = TriStar Pictures | released = | runtime = 141 minutes | country = United States | language = English | budget = $70 million | gross = $300.9 million }} 'Hook' is a 1991 American fantasy adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by James V. Hart and Malia Scotch Marmo. It stars Robin Williams as Peter Banning / Peter Pan, Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook, Julia Roberts as Tinker Bell, Bob Hoskins as Smee, Maggie Smith as Wendy, Caroline Goodall as Moira Banning, and Charlie Korsmo as Jack Banning. It acts as a sequel to J. M. Barrie's 1911 novel ''Peter and Wendy focusing on an adult Peter Pan who has forgotten all about his childhood. In his new life, he is known as Peter Banning, a successful but unimaginative and workaholic corporate lawyer with a wife (Wendy's granddaughter) and two children. However, when Captain Hook, the enemy of his past, kidnaps his children, he returns to Neverland in order to save them. Along the journey, he reclaims the memories of his past and becomes a better person. Spielberg began developing the film in the early 1980s with Walt Disney Productions and Paramount Pictures, which would have followed the storyline seen in the 1924 silent film and 1953 animated film. It entered pre-production in 1985, but Spielberg abandoned the project. James V. Hart developed the script with director Nick Castle and TriStar Pictures before Spielberg decided to direct in 1989. It was shot almost entirely on sound stages at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California. Released on December 11, 1991, Hook received mixed reviews from critics, and while it was a commercial success, its box office take was lower than expected. It was nominated in five categories at the 64th Academy Awards. It also spawned merchandise, including video games, action figures, and comic book adaptations. Plot Peter Banning is a successful corporate lawyer in San Francisco. Though he loves his family, his workaholic lifestyle keeps him from his wife, Moira, and children, 12-year-old Jack and 7-year-old Maggie, and leads him to miss Jack's Little League Baseball game. The family flies to London to visit Moira's grandmother, Wendy Darling – ostensibly the creator of the Peter Pan stories, whose childhood neighbor J. M. Barrie transcribed the tales. After Peter yells at Jack and Maggie for disturbing a business call, Moira confronts him for missing precious time with his children. Peter, Moira, and Wendy return from a charity dinner honoring Wendy's lifelong service to orphans to find the house ransacked and the children abducted, with a cryptic ransom note signed Captain James Hook. Wendy confesses to Peter that her stories of are true and that Peter himself is Peter Pan, having lost his childhood memories when he fell in love with Moira. In disbelief, Peter gets drunk in the playroom, until Tinker Bell appears and takes him to Neverland to rescue his children from Hook and his pirates. Hook, eager to face his old nemesis, is frustrated to realize Peter does not remember their past adventures, and makes a deal with Tinker Bell that Peter will regain his former self in three days for a climactic battle. Peter meets the new generation of Lost Boys, led by Rufio, who refuses to believe Peter is the real Pan. The Lost Boys help Peter train, and he regains his imagination and lost youth. Thud Butt gives him marbles left by Tootles, now an old man living with Wendy. Bereft of adventure, Hook contemplates suicide, but Smee persuades him to manipulate Jack and Maggie into loving Hook to break Peter's will. While Maggie refuses to be taken in, Jack is receptive to Hook's "fathering". Hook arranges a makeshift baseball game for Jack, where Peter is horrified to see Hook and Jack treat each other like father and son. Peter tries to fly but fails, and his shadow leads him to the Lost Boys’ old treehouse. Tinker Bell helps him remember his childhood as Peter Pan and how he fell in love with Moira, and he realizes the happy thought he requires to fly: becoming a father. Peter’s former self and power to fly is restored, and Rufio returns his sword and leadership. The child-minded Peter finds Tinker Bell, who grows human-sized and kisses him, confessing her unrequited love for him, but Peter remembers his love for Moira and his children. Tinker Bell tells Peter to save his children, and reverts to fairy size. The following day, Peter and the Lost Boys attack the pirates as agreed, leading to a lengthy battle. Peter rescues Maggie and promises to be a better father to her and Jack. Rufio is mortally wounded by Hook; dying in Peter's arms, Rufio tells him he wishes he had a dad like him, and Jack regains his memories of his father. The pirates are defeated, and Peter prepares to leave with Maggie and Jack, but Hook goads him into a final duel. Peter disarms Hook, but his children stop him from delivering the fatal strike. Hook attacks Peter with a hidden blade, but is distracted by Tinker Bell as Peter drives the pirate’s hook into the stomach of the now-taxidermied crocodile that ate his hand. Seemingly reanimated, the crocodile topples over and swallows Hook, who disappears. Tinker Bell flies Maggie and Jack home, and Peter gives his sword to Thud Butt, the new leader of the Lost Boys, before flying away from Neverland. Maggie and Jack are reunited with their mother and great-grandmother, and Peter wakes up in Kensington Gardens by a statue of Peter Pan, greeted by a sweeper bearing a strong resemblance to Smee. Peter bids farewell to Tinker Bell, who tells Peter she will always love him. Entering through the window, a newly joyful Peter rejoins his family and gives Tootles his marbles. Finding the bag full of pixie dust, Tootles flies out the window. Wendy wonders if Peter's adventures are over, but he replies, "To live would be an awfully big adventure". Cast * Robin Williams as Peter Banning / Peter Pan ** Ryan Francis as teenage Peter Pan ** Max Hoffman as young Peter Pan ** Matthew Van Ginkel as baby Peter Pan * Dustin Hoffman as Captain James Hook * Julia Roberts as Tinker Bell ** Lisa Wilhoit as Tinker Bell in a flashback in which Peter is a baby * Bob Hoskins as Mr. Smee * Charlie Korsmo as Jack Banning * Amber Scott as Maggie Banning * Maggie Smith as Wendy Darling ** Gwyneth Paltrow as teenage Wendy Darling * Caroline Goodall as Moira Banning * Dante Basco as Rufio * Jasen Fisher as Ace * Raushan Hammond as Thud Butt * Isaiah Robinson as Pockets * James Madio as Don't Ask * Arthur Malet as the older Tootles * Laurel Cronin as Liza, Wendy's maid * Phil Collins as Inspector Good, the British police detective * Thomas Tulak as Too Small * Alex Zuckerman as Latchboy * Ahmad Stoner as No Nap * Kelly Rowan as Peter Pan's mother * David Crosby as Tickles, a member of Hook's pirate crew * Tony Burton and Nick Tate as Bill Jukes and Noodler, members of Hook's pirate crew who serve as his security entourage * Glenn Close as Gutless, a male pirate who is punished by Hook * Jimmy Buffett (uncredited) as the pirate who attempts to steal Peter's shoes * George Lucas and Carrie Fisher (both uncredited) as the kissing couple on the bridge who are sprinkled with pixie dust as Tinker Bell carries Peter to Neverland Production Inspiration Spielberg found close personal connection to the Peter Pan story from his own childhood. The troubled relationship between Peter and Jack in the sequel echoed Spielberg's relationship with his own father. Previous Spielberg films that explored a dysfunctional father-son relationship included E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Peter's "quest for success" paralleled Spielberg starting out as a film director and transforming into a Hollywood business magnate.McBride, p. 413. "I think a lot of people today are losing their imagination because they are work-driven. They are so self-involved with work and success and arriving at the next plateau that children and family almost become incidental. I have even experienced it myself when I have been on a very tough shoot and I've not seen my kids except on weekends. They ask for my time and I can't give it to them because I'm working." Like Peter at the beginning of the film, Spielberg has a fear of flying. He feels that Peter's "enduring quality" in the storyline is simply to fly. "Anytime anything flies, whether it's Superman, Batman, or E.T., it's got to be a tip of the hat to Peter Pan," Spielberg reflected in a 1992 interview. "Peter Pan was the first time I saw anybody fly. Before I saw Superman, before I saw Batman, and of course before I saw any superheroes, my first memory of anybody flying is in Peter Pan." Pre-production The genesis of the film started when Spielberg's mother often read him Peter and Wendy as a bedtime story. He explained in 1985 "When I was 11 years old I actually directed the story during a school production. I have always felt like Peter Pan. I still feel like Peter Pan. It has been very hard for me to grow up, I'm a victim of the Peter Pan syndrome."McBride, p.42—43 In the early 1980s, Spielberg began to develop a film with Walt Disney Pictures that would have closely followed the storyline of the 1924 silent film and 1953 animated film.Ana Maria Bahiana (March 1992). "Hook", Cinema Papers, pp. 67—69. He also considered directing it as a musical with Michael Jackson in the lead. Jackson expressed interest in the part, but was not interested in Spielberg's vision of an adult Peter Pan who had forgotten about his past. The project was taken to Paramount Pictures, where James V. Hart wrote the first script with Dustin Hoffman already cast as Captain Hook.McBride, p. 409. It entered pre-production in 1985 for filming to begin at sound stages in England. Elliot Scott had been hired as production designer. With the birth of his first son, Max, in 1985, Spielberg decided to drop out. "I decided not to make Peter Pan when I had my first child," Spielberg commented. "I didn't want to go to London and have seven kids on wires in front of blue screens. I wanted to be home as a dad." Around this time, he considered directing Big, which carried similar motifs and themes with it. In 1987, he "permanently abandoned" it, feeling he expressed his childhood and adult themes in Empire of the Sun. Meanwhile, Paramount and Hart moved forward on production with Nick Castle as director. Hart began to work on a new storyline when his son, Jake, showed his family a drawing. "We asked Jake what it was and he said it was a crocodile eating Captain Hook, but that the crocodile really didn't eat him, he got away," Hart reflected. "As it happens, I had been trying to crack Peter Pan for years, but I didn't just want to do a remake. So I went, 'Wow. Hook is not dead. The crocodile is. We've all been fooled'. In 1986 our family was having dinner and Jake said, 'Daddy, did Peter Pan ever grow up?' My immediate response was, 'No, of course not'. And Jake said, 'But what if he did?' I realized that Peter did grow up, just like all of us baby boomers who are now in our forties. I patterned him after several of my friends on Wall Street, where the pirates wear three-piece suits and ride in limos."McBride, p. 410. Filming By 1989, Ian Rathbone changed the title to Hook, and took it from Paramount to TriStar Pictures, headed by Mike Medavoy, who was Spielberg's first talent agent. Robin Williams signed on, but he and Hoffman had creative differences with Castle. Medavoy saw the film as a vehicle for Spielberg and Castle was dismissed, but paid a $500,000 settlement. Dodi Fayed, who owned certain rights to make a Peter Pan film, sold his interest to TriStar in exchange for an executive producer credit.Medavoy, Mike and Young, Josh (2002). You're Only as Good as Your Next One: 100 Great Films, 100 Good Films, and 100 for Which I Should Be Shot (p. 230). New York City: Atria Books Spielberg briefly worked together with Hart to rewrite the script before hiring Malia Scotch Marmo to rewrite Captain Hook's dialog and Carrie Fisher for Tinker Bell's. The Writers Guild of America gave Hart and Marmo screenplay credit, while Hart and Castle were credited with the story. Fisher went uncredited. Filming began on February 19, 1991, occupying nine sound stages at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California. Stage 30 housed the Neverland Lost Boys playground, while Stage 10 supplied Captain Hook's ship cabin. Hidden hydraulics were installed to rock the setpiece to simulate a swaying ship, but the filmmakers found the movement distracted the dialogue, so the idea was dropped. Stage 27 housed the full-sized Jolly Roger and the surrounding Pirate Wharf.DVD production notes Industrial Light & Magic provided the visual effects sequences. This marked the beginning of Tony Swatton's career, as he was asked to make weaponry for the film. It was financed by Amblin Entertainment and TriStar Pictures, with TriStar distributing it. Spielberg brought on John Napier as a "visual consultant", having been impressed with his work on Cats. The original production budget was set at $48 million, but ended up between $60–80 million. The primary reason for the increased budget was the shooting schedule, which ran 40 days over its original 76-day schedule. Spielberg explained, "It was all my fault. I began to work at a slower pace than I usually do."McBride, p. 412. Spielberg's on-set relationship with Julia Roberts was troubled, and he later admitted in an interview with 60 Minutes, "It was an unfortunate time for us to work together." In a 1999 Vanity Fair interview, Roberts said that Spielberg's comments “really hurt my feelings.” She “couldn’t believe this person that I knew and trusted was actually hesitating to come to my defense . . . it was the first time that I felt I had a turncoat in my midst.” Soundtrack (original) (reissue) | recorded = | venue = | studio = | genre = | length = 75:18 (original) 140:34 (reissue) | label = Epic Records (original) La-La Land Records (reissue) | producer = | prev_title = Home Alone | prev_year = | next_title = JFK | next_year = }} The film score was composed and conducted by John Williams. He was brought in at an early stage when Spielberg was considering making the film as a musical. Accordingly, he wrote around eight songs for the project at this stage. The idea was later abandoned. Most of his song ideas were incorporated into the instrumental score, though two songs survive as songs in the finished film: "We Don't Wanna Grow Up" and "When You're Alone", both with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse. The original 1991 issue was released by Epic Records. In 2012, a limited edition of the soundtrack, called Hook: Expanded Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, was released by La-La Land Records and Sony Music. It contains almost the complete score with alternates and unused material. It also contains liner notes that explain the film's production and score recording. ;Commercial songs from film, but not on soundtrack * "Pick'em Up" – Music by John Williams and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse * "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" – Written by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer Video games A video game based on the film and bearing the same name was released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991. The game was released for additional game consoles in 1992. Reception Box office Spielberg, Williams, and Hoffman did not take salaries for the film. Their deal called for them to split 40% of TriStar Pictures' gross revenues. They were to receive $20 million from the first $50 million in gross theatrical film rentals, with TriStar keeping the next $70 million in rentals before the three resumed receiving their percentage. The film was released in North America on December 11, 1991, earning $13,522,535 in its opening weekend. It went on to gross $119,654,823 in North America and $181,200,000 in foreign countries, accumulating a worldwide total of $300,854,823. It is the sixth-highest-grossing "pirate-themed" film, behind all five films in the ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' film series. In North America totals, it was the sixth-highest-grossing film in 1991, and fourth-highest-grossing worldwide. It ended up making a profit of $50 million for the studio, yet it was still declared a financial disappointment, having been overshadowed by the release of Disney's Beauty and the Beast and a decline in box-office receipts compared to the previous years.Medavoy, Mike and Young, Josh (2002). You're Only as Good as Your Next One: 100 Great Films, 100 Good Films, and 100 for Which I Should Be Shot (p. 234-235). New York City: Atria Books Critical response later admitted in interviews that he was disappointed with the final result of the film.]] Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 26% of critics have given the film a positive review, based on 61 reviews, with an average rating of 4.6/10. The site's consensus states: "The look of Hook is lively indeed but Steven Spielberg directs on autopilot here, giving in too quickly to his sentimental, syrupy qualities." On Metacritic, the film has a 52 out of 100 rating, based on reviews from 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times stated that "The sad thing about the screenplay for Hook is that it's so correctly titled: This whole construction is really nothing more than a hook on which to hang a new version of the Peter Pan story. No effort is made to involve Peter's magic in the changed world he now inhabits, and little thought has been given to Captain Hook's extraordinary persistence in wanting to revisit the events of the past. The failure in Hook is its inability to re-imagine the material, to find something new, fresh or urgent to do with the Peter Pan myth. Lacking that, Spielberg should simply have remade the original story, straight, for this generation." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine felt it would "only appeal to the baby boomer generation" and highly criticized the sword-fighting choreography. Vincent Canby of The New York Times felt the story structure was not well balanced, feeling Spielberg depended too much on art direction. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post was one of few who gave it a positive review. Hinson elaborated on crucial themes of children, adulthood, and loss of innocence. However, he observed that Spielberg "was stuck too much in a theme park world". Accolades The film was nominated for five categories at the 64th Academy Awards. This included Best Production Design (Norman Garwood, Garrett Lewis) (lost to Bugsy), Best Costume Design (lost to Bugsy), Best Visual Effects (lost to Terminator 2: Judgment Day), Best Makeup (lost to Terminator 2: Judgment Day) and Best Original Song ("When You're Alone", lost to Beauty and the Beast). It lost the Saturn Award for Best Fantasy Film to Aladdin, in which Williams co-starred, while cinematographer Dean Cundey was nominated for his work by the American Society of Cinematographers. Hoffman was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (lost to Williams for The Fisher King). John Williams was given a Grammy Award nomination for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media; Julia Roberts received a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Supporting Actress (lost to Sean Young as the dead twin in A Kiss Before Dying). Legacy In 2011, Spielberg told Entertainment Weekly: "There are parts of Hook I love. I'm really proud of my work right up through Peter being hauled off in the parachute out the window, heading for Neverland. I'm a little less proud of the Neverland sequences, because I'm uncomfortable with that highly stylized world that today, of course, I would probably have done with live-action character work inside a completely digital set. But we didn't have the technology to do it then, and my imagination only went as far as building physical sets and trying to paint trees blue and red." Spielberg gave a more blunt assessment in a 2013 interview on Kermode & Mayo's Film Review Show: "I wanna see Hook again because I so don't like that movie, and I'm hoping someday I'll see it again and perhaps like some of it." In 2018, Spielberg told Empire, "I felt like a fish out of water making Hook... I didn't have confidence in the script. I had confidence in the first act and I had confidence in the epilogue. I didn't have confidence in the body of it." He added, "I didn't quite know what I was doing and I tried to paint over my insecurity with production value," admitting "the more insecure I felt about it, the bigger and more colorful the sets became." See also * List of films featuring miniature people References Bibliography * * External links * * * * * * Sony Imagesoft's * Ocean's Category:Peter Pan films Category:1991 films Category:American films Category:English-language films Category:1990s adventure films Category:1990s comedy films Category:1990s fantasy films Category:American children's adventure films Category:American adventure comedy films Category:American fantasy adventure films Category:American fantasy-comedy films Category:Films scored by John Williams Category:Films about child abduction Category:Films about fairies and sprites Category:Films about lawyers Category:Films directed by Steven Spielberg Category:Films produced by Kathleen Kennedy Category:Films produced by Frank Marshall Category:Films set in London Category:Films set in San Francisco Category:Films set on airplanes Category:Films shot in California Category:Films shot in London Category:Films shot in Los Angeles Category:Mermaids in film Category:Pirate films Category:Amblin Entertainment films Category:TriStar Pictures films Category:Films produced by Gerald R. 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